STATE OF THE U.K. MUSIC MARKET: 2016

The U.K. recorded music market’s consumption in 2016, driven by a 68% rise in streaming, increased 1.5% with a loose valuation of around £1bn. Numbers come from trade body BPI and the Official Charts Company, and there’s more within.

The Album Equivalent Sales (AES) metric is used to calculate the volume of music consumption, and the value is an estimate that doesn’t include income derived from ad-supported audio streams (as in previous years).

That value estimate was £1bn in 2016, and clearer numbers will come via the Entertainment Retailer's Association later this week. As it stands, it's down £0.06bn from 2015, and £0.02bn from 2014. 123m albums or equivalents were either streamed, purchased on physical format, or downloaded by U.K. music consumers in 2016. Consumption is up 1.5% on 2015 (which benefited from an extra week’s trading as a 53 week chart year).

45bn audio streams happened on services like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Tidal in Blighty last year—up 68% on 2015 (that stat doesn’t include YouTube). Audio streaming now accounts for 36.4% of all U.K. music consumption.

CD sales are down 11.7% year-on-year in 2016, and, combined with vinyl LP, CD and physical formats, account for 41% of U.K. music consumption in terms of volume. Downloaded albums and singles account for 22.6%.

Vinyl enjoyed another stellar year with over 3.2m LPs sold—a 53% rise on 2015 and the highest annual total in a quarter of a century since 1991. Vinyl LPs now account for nearly 5% of the albums market.